A Room With Two Walls
by reminiscent-afterthought
Summary: He knew their deepest fears, and yet they were smiling happily at him.


**A/N:** Written for the gx_100 challenge, prompt #47 – after the fact. Also written for the 5,10,20,50,70,100 fandoms challenge, fandom 12.

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**A Room With Two Walls**

Fujiwara wondered if it was a coincidence he wound up in the same room he had occupied almost five years before. Samejima was after all still Principal of Duel Academia, and Chronos still headed the Obelisk dorm. Although Fujiwara had quickly noticed that not only had Chronos been promoted to the position of Vice Principal, said promotion had come his way by means of a newfound popularity with the students.

He had noticed that when the Academia – mostly the third year students and the current graduation committee (to his surprise being headed by a first year who looked to still be of junior high school age) – flew into a panic following the resolution of the incident with Darkness. After all, the graduation had only been a few days later, and the interference had meant that many things had fallen behind, including preparations and the Duel Tournament. Due to the impossibility, said tournament had been cut short and results recalculated for the duels that had already occurred. That didn't stop the first and second years challenging their seniors for a farewell duel though, leaving the more administrative side of things more disorganised.

Fujiwara found himself in the thick of the chaos, feeling largely responsible. Still, there was no time for self-pity as his computer and research skills were quickly put to use by Saotome Rei in finishing the scrapbook for that year's graduates. He also had little time to formulate an apology; it was no longer his wrongness that was so hard to admit, but the burden he now carried, and by the time he went with the direct approach and straight-up said "sorry", those he apologised to (he had basically sought the only student he personally knew: Fubuki) had already formulated the perfect response.

And they were right. Duel Academia was that sort of place, where even after all he had done – all the trouble he had caused – he still belonged. A place where people acknowledged him as though he was just another student – and he was, frantically brushing up on the first year material the day after graduation so that he could at least start as a second year student.

And he did, passing with flying colours and moving out of his temporary spot in the Orisis Dorms and back to Obelisk Blue – and his old room.

Naturally, it wasn't the way he had left it, waste-paper basket overflowing with turn up papers and photos ripped from his board in a feverish haste. The board too lacked its ugly pin marks and gaps; in fact, it looked as though it had been replaced for this one didn't look as though it had been touched by a pin at all.

He gently ran his fingers over the surface; yes, it even had the plastic feel to it, as though its covering had been only recently removed. Still, his digits remembered a different board, a board viciously ripped through as he had torn photo after photo from it. Photos of his parents, his classmates, his friends…

They were irreplaceable, and he had so carelessly torn them aside. He had only one photo now, one Rei had been kind enough to produce for him. One of the few, apparently, she had managed to convince Judai to partake in. The only one that, she claimed, contained all the friends that had been present on the island that year. Even Ryou was there, having decided to leave his departure till his brother's graduation.

Most of them he barely knew, but were important all the same. People that had stood out from the sea of darkness. People who had stood against it. People who had almost drowned before raising their heads.

He barely knew them at all, but still he felt he knew something intimate about them. And they knew it too, but no-one spoke of it afterwards. Instead, their bright smiling faces peered at him from the glossy print – even Ryou, who had barely smiled in the time Fujiwara had known him, and even Fubuki who had been constantly smiling, but rarely so genuinely as he did at that frozen moment.

Fujiwara takes a moment more to look at the photo, then pins it to the board. It no longer looks as new, as empty, as it had before, and he found himself looking into Rei's face and remembering another eager boy who had loved taking photos, realising he had always sent the negatives home and those treasures of his past weren't forever lost after all.


End file.
